Eight years ago this week, the Grassroots Targeting poll gave U.S. Rep. Diane Black an edge of 15 percentage points (41% to 26%) over runner-up Randy Boyd, a businessman and former Cabinet member of Gov. Bill Haslam, in the race to be the Republican nominee for Tennessee’s next governor.
The poll would be the high-water mark for Black, who led in almost every poll through mid-July of 2018. That’s when businessman Bill Lee, a distant third in most polls during much of the year, broke through, took a narrow lead and would be elected as the nominee early the next month.
A new Beacon Poll released Thursday gives U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn 63% of the vote in her quest to become the Republican nominee in the race to succeed Lee. U.S. Rep. John Rose corralled 10% and state Rep. Monty Fritts 5%.
As much as we wish there were other choices for Tennessee Republicans, with only 22% of Republican primary voters undecided according to the poll, we don’t see Rose or Fritts pulling another Lee and replacing the front-runner in the waning months of the campaign. We think Rose would offer a more steady management of the state, but his campaign has not caught fire as he hoped.
Blackburn, while tending to her Senate duties and campaigning largely only in front of supportive groups, continued to be in the forefront this week with her release of a potential new congressional map. She released the map ahead of the state legislative session called by Lee this week to redistrict the state after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave cover for such an activity last week.